Translating Cuba

With much fanfare they announced at noon on January 17, a “major” television event to be held that night about “changes in Cuban television programming.” I waited, caught between disbelief and hope, because sometimes it’s nice when they surprise us with the unexpected, but this time it was not. As a group of my children’s friends who were here at the time said: “so much jawboning (chatter) for over half an hour, just to increase — this time, substantially — the live broadcasts of the TeleSUR TV.”

The rest went to “shuffling” the coordinates of the TV because they have so few programs. They changed the channels of some of the domestic programs as if doing so would improve the transmissions in general. It’s like moving the furniture around to get the idea that you have more space and comfort.

For the first time we saw on camera the faces of the “gurus” or directors of the five national television channels. I can not understand why so many masters and graduates are needed to run television of such poor quality. I think anyone can do it, because if we compare it with what we had pre-1959, almost none of the directors of that broadcast mass medium completed college and yet everything worked efficiently. Why not now?

We know public opinion is of no interest to these entities, nor is it of any interest to the government, which only relies on it to ratify with a vote — in order to legitimize their management to the outside — what they planned and decided, although repeatedly, for decades, they have failed. Change happens when the Nomenklatura decides, in a clear contempt for the popular will. So the excuse appearing in the written press that the changes in television programming must respond “to the requests and interests of the audience” is a fallacy.

The “exchange” of greater importance is the live broadcast of Telesur, of which previously we were allowed only a few hours — not live — in the evening and now, after nearly eight years of its existence and with our society contributing to its financing with a “generous” government grant, they will grant us more than 13 hours a day. Wouldn’t it have been better to have enabled a new channel for this multinational television? They’re continuing to beat a dead horse and everyone knows it. This had influenced the production of Cuban TV programs of lower and lower quality, rejected by the citizens, who are ultimately those who consume them.

People welcome the additional Telesur broadcast hours on Cuban television, but not with much enthusiasm because clearly this society is already saturated with 50 years of political propaganda, long speeches, and the endless appearances of the caudillos on our screens, something the South American continent has now been experiencing for a little while.

Perhaps another of the objectives was to “shake a stick” at the press, which is already on the defensive and not about to break its own behavioral blockade — perhaps for fear of losing their perks — for which they are not entirely responsible and because they suspect or suppose — it’s understandable — that in Cuba media freedom could be “a stethoscope to their ideological health, or in the press editing room.”

When will they be able to address these topics objectively? I imagine that none of the “boys” of the official press want to take the first step. It’s natural that after 54 years of restricted freedoms, there is resistance to change — due to accumulated helplessness — in the producers, the writers and the entire terrain of Cuban citizens. Now the authorities pass to our media professionals the responsibility for the lack of information transparency in their spaces, and the ber-partisanship of the same. And so they pay for their unconditional fealty.

Many of us now receive from the television of the south a great amount of news and information in real-time that before we got in doses from the national media system, including the taking of two cities in northern Mali by French troops, the military solution to the hostage crisis at the gas plant in Algeria, the fact that Ecuador exceeds ten million internet users for the first time, and for the first time ever many of us heard live the inauguration speech of a president of the United States.

The speed with which the government is moving its “reformist threads” gives rise to concerns and suspicions in a society that knows the dictatorship has declared that, “this is for more socialism.” And so “these metamorphoses” that are undertaken and envisioned on the sociopolitical Cuban horizon, are more for convenience and survival of the regime than for a real transition to a better future for our nation.

January 22 2013

In geology, a fault is a discontinuity that is formed by the fracture of the surface rocks of the earth, when tectonic forces exceed the resistance in these rocks it causes tidal waves and earthquakes. The same thing happens with power; readjustment is accompanied by apparent cataclysm.

In Cuba, the punishment, harassment and expulsion campaign for foreign businessmen based in Havana started in 2005, days after the General Raul Castro, his entourage and family, returned from a tour of Spain and Portugal, where they had gone as guests by the grace of a man named Amerigo, not Vespucci but Amorim, who is, according to Forbes magazine, the richest man in Portugal; his fortune amounts to 7 billion dollars.

Américo Ferreira de Amorim long ago inherited a small cork factory founded by his late grandfather in 1870; today the Amorim Group is the largest cork producer in the world. A diversified emporium, ranging from oil to banking, textile, forestry, agriculture, real estate and tourism. They have representations in countries such as the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, Russia, Angola, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, England, Netherlands, USA, and Spain.

Mr. Américo, a personal friend of Fidel and Raul Castro from the 60s, set up his company (Amorim Trading Import and Export SA) in Havana in the 80’s. Located at 6604 5th Ave between 66th and 68th in Miramar. Amorin, is principally involved in the provision of inputs for the Cuban ministry and industry of fishing. It finances major commercial operations of the Cuban government such as purchasing fuel, milk powder and frozen fish for the army and the population. It has the exclusive right to export Cuban seafood to the European market. With the French group ACCOR it maintains investments in the construction and management of hotels such as the Sevilla in Havana and the Punta Arenas in Varadero. Why does this company stands out above the rest of all foreign firms based in Cuba?

During the trip to Europe mentioned above, and over a platter with brie and raspberry jam, a perfect delight to the eye and palate, General Raul Castro asked his old friend Amorim, that for better enforcement of joint ventures (without specifying the meaning of “sets”), one person in particular should carry the reins of the Amorim Group in Cuba. Wish granted, favor paid. In 2006 Mr. José Guimares, a Portuguese businessman, and one of the oldest directors in the management group was replaced; by someone unscrupulous with ambitions and a bandit’s heart who knows the danger of betrayal. Paolo Titolo, Italian by birth and extortionist by profession, husband of Mariela Castro, Raul’s son-in-law.

Corruption in Cuba is a common practice that has always been present in the most inaccessible of the halls of power, and from there it descends, contagious. The flood of smugglers we’ve seen recently, cases of embezzlement we read about in the press, the diversion of resources, foreign firms dissolved, and the many officials who are publicly renounced or are sanctioned by an apparent anti-corruption policy, is no more than a smoke screen and temper tantrum by power to subtly hide the indecency of a brothel.

January 21 2013

Although far from my beloved planet, I keep up with what is happening there thanks to the internet, which here in this corner of France, as in almost every other country, is available to all, which is not the case back home, where only the most privileged have free access to it.

This small city of 20,000 inhabitants has everything any human being would need to live—heated homes, well-paved roads and excellent traffic signals, clean streets and sidewalks, a system for sorting out the trash generated in the course of daily life, schools, churches, stores, restaurants, parks, supermarkets and museums. Most notably the state and the citizenry also pay a great deal of attention to protected ecological zones, the preservation and care of plants and wildlife, and to city rules and regulations. It has,in other words, everything that a human being needs for a good and healthy existence.

Being with this very important part of my family, I cannot get out of my mind how ironic it is that my small island is being punished— as though all the exhaustion and suffering that has built up for more than half a century were not enough— by an epidemic that had been eradicated since the 19th century.

Today, I carefully observed citizens and neighbors taking their own trash to locations near their homes, where all this material was sorted into separate containers to be later recycled and repurposed as new commodities. Even children know about and take part in this activity. In their homes and in their schools they are educated and informed about the importance of this civic activity. They are also taught respect for community property and the need to abide by rules and regulations. All this made me embarrassed for my country, which until 1959 was at the forefront in Latin America with respect to hygiene and public health. This was also true in many other areas, where we ranked at or near the top, not only in the region, but also in relation to some European countries.

As it began to snow, the picturesque landscape of Alsatian buildings— some very old ones mixed with modern ones, all built according to regulations and respectful of an architectural sensibility that does not disrupt the harmony of the surroundings— took on a new enchantment as it became cloaked in white.

Returning from out stroll, we walked along Allée des Platanes, between the villages of Blotzheim and Altkirsch, which had been planted with trees on both sides of the roadway during the reign of Napoleon III. I could not help thinking about my neighbors in Havana, Carmelo and Felipe, who had not left a single tree standing on our street. Here is but one example of the differences in culture and education.

January 21 2013

Source: Yoani’s Twitter

21 January 2013

The phrase, attributed in Cuba both to Stevenson and Savon, the complete super greats of Cuban boxing, is my compass, my alpha-omega, my real reality since I deal with hardware, software, platforms, all to become technologically literate, struggling to reach the sixth grade.

Whenever I face something new — in this area, and that’s every day, and I, for my part, also find something worthwhile every day — my first reaction is to be stunned. I don’t understand anything, if it’s explained to me I forget it immediately, I am afraid to do something on my own and mess everything up. In therapy to overcome my inferiority complex, I have become a student of manuals, a watcher of video demonstrations, there is no instruction booklet I haven’t examined with a magnifying glass to read how to put the Ariel font in six-point type. It’s ironic because with this aura of knowledge, young people come to me for help, which gives me a tingle of insecurity: of losing the respect of those I try to help, and facing my own ignorance and affecting them.

When I already think like that, imagine last Friday when I got a double challenge: My cellphone debut and I also had to activate MMS to connect my Twitter account with TwitPic, the application for images. I spent a 10 CUC car and a little more (every MMS costs. 2.30 CUC [about $2.50 U.S.]), and I would have continued had a not received a very nice text message, I don’t know from whom: “Congratulations, Please, do not try to send any more Twitpics, you already sent the same photo three times.”

So my training ran between pride and embarrassment. Me? I’m not saying if the technique is the technique.

January 21 2013

Once again Mr. Jose Ramon Machado Ventura addressed the issue of the speed of “the transformations” driven by Raul Castro, warning that these processes are distorted from the outside by voices “paid by the empire” who demand more rapid progress naively believing that they are going to lead to capitalism.

On this occasion Cuba’s first vice president had the audacity to add that Cubans enjoy freedom of expression because “the people are constantly stating their views and opinions without any type of coercion.” According to the version published in the newspaper Granma, “Cubans talk on the street, on the block, at the meetings of the CDR [Committee for the Defense of the Revolution] and the FMC [Cuban Women’s Federation]; and if they are students they freely express themselves in the systematic interchanges in the student organizations, and everyone is heard.”

The second Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party forgot the detail that the freedom of expression of a nation is not measured by the examples he mentions, but by the access people have to the media. On the other hand, to affirm that there is no type of coercion for offering views and opinions is to deny the existence of the repudiation rallies, of State Security’s taking note of who on the block and in the workplace dares to push the limits of what can be openly criticized.

It is true that people are increasingly less afraid, but that is not a credit to the executioners but rather to the victims. To say that people express themselves freely is like saying that the number of people who drink milk at breakfast is three times the number who receive it on the ration book, or that in Cuba no one is barefoot, or that the number of people with cellphones is already equal to those with land lines, data that may be true but that are not the results of the achievements of the system, but rather a victory of the citizens who find alternative paths to earn a living and better their standard of living.

The so-called measures of perfecting or updating the model are not steps towards capitalism although they do, indeed, deviate substantially from what we once described as Socialism. In proportion to their ceasing to resemble that deceiving egalitarian utopia, people feel better. The aged leaders can disguise as continuity what is clearly a dismantling, but life will have the last word. Perhaps by then “they” will no longer be among us, or no longer occupy their current positions; and then the blame for the final collapse will fall on the new wolves of their own litter, who today applaud them and who tomorrow will tear them to pieces without pity.

21 January 2013